A federal judge has ruled that the Unites States government must make the most common morning-after pill available over the counter for all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls 16 and under.

The decision, on a fraught and politically controversial subject, comes after a decade-long fight over who should have access to the pill and under what circumstances, and it counteracts an unprecedented move by the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services secretary who in 2011 overruled a recommendation by the Food and Drug Administration to make the pill available for all ages without a prescription.

There will inevitably be more to tease out in terms of details and implementation, and certainly pushback from a host of folks, but I think this deserves a 30-second dance party.

SYREETA MCFADDEN is a Brooklyn based writer, photographer and adjunct professor of English. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, Religion Dispatches and Storyscape Journal. She is the managing editor of the online literary magazine, Union Station, and a co-curator of Poets in Unexpected Places. You can follow her on Twitter @reetamac.

Syreeta McFadden is a contributing opinion writer for The Guardian US and an editor of Union Station Magazine.

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There’s a scene about birth control in the questionablyfeminist 2017 Hindi flick Lipstick Under My Burqa that stuck with me. Shireen, whose abusive husband rapes her and refuses to use condoms, goes to the gynecologist for another abortion. The gynecologist tells ...

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